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Holy Britannian Empire (Game of Geass)
The Holy Empire of Britannia is a superpower in theonering3434's Code Geass/Game of Thrones ''crossover fan-fiction Game of Geass. History The story of Britannia begins in the distant past, in a group of islands off the north-western coast of Europe. Some time between the 7th and the 1st century BC those islands came to be inhabited by a subgroup of a people whom history would call the Celts. Divided into various tribal groups, the Celts of ancient Britain possessed a civilization remarkably advanced for its time, with sophisticated agriculture, a system of wooden roads, and even metal coinage. This island world would see a period of dramatic change, beginning in 55 BC with the arrival of Julius Caesar. Britain had been known in the classical world for centuries as a source of Tin, and was reputed to be a wealthy land; perhaps wealthy enough to be worth conquering. Caesar's first landing was more of a reconnaissance than an invasion, seeking to ascertain whether or not the Britons had been helping their Gallic cousins against him. He established a firm foothold, only to be forced to withdraw when bad weather in the English Channel threatened his supply lines. He returned the next year with a larger force, with the intent of conquering Britain. Eowyn It is at this point that a Celtic warrior named Eowyn enters the pages of history. Orphaned at a young age, he grew up to be one of the finest warriors in ancient Britain, at a time when his people were under threat by the Romans. When Caesar and his forces invaded Britain in 54 BC, he successfully convinced the Celtic chieftains to put aside their differences and work together to save their home (little is known about how he was able to do so). The United Celtic army led by Eowyn successfully repelled Caesar and his forces despite suffering heavy losses. This earned Eowyn the respect of Caesar whom the latter decided to begin peace negotiations possibly to salvage what was left of his troops. Eowyn and Caesar agreed to cease hostilities in exchange that the Roman Republic recognize the sovereignty of ancient Britain. Rome was already dealing with economic turmoil at the time and so immediately agreed to the proposed armistice. After Caesar left, Eowyn was hailed as a hero by his people, and the Celtic chieftains unanimously agreed to proclaim Eowyn ''High King of the Celts, thus establishing the Eowynid Kingdom. But peace is only temporary. Sternit ad Imperium The Romans would not return to Britain for almost a hundred years. But return they did, and in 43 AD, Emperor Claudius dispatched a force of four legions under the command of Aulus Plautius to bring the Britons to heel. At the same time, the current High King, Gwarth, had just put down an uprising spearheaded by druid extremists and was not prepared for the second invasion of Britain. Despite this, Gwarth and his forces were able to put up a fierce fight against the Romans, but alas, it wasn’t enough; for the Romans successfully conquered the Eowynid Kingdom in 47 AD. Surprisingly, Emperor Claudius decided to retain the Eowynid Kingdom as opposed to splitting it into smaller entities, thus marking a turning point in British history. As for High King Gwarth, he and his family were mysteriously found dead when the Romans came to his home. The Romans crowned Dewrder, a distant cousin of Gwarth, as the new High King, provided that he swear loyalty to Emperor Claudius to which he agreed. Though legions were stationed in Britannia to keep them honest, Dewrder and his descendants had a free hand to expand their territory into the 'barbarian' lands to the north and west. This they did with a policy not unlike that of their Roman overlords, combining outright conquest with clientage. High-status Britannians increasingly adopted Roman lifestyles and sent their sons to Rome to be educated. The administration was expanded and improved along Roman lines, and the settling of Roman colonia ''on Britannian soil helped to spread Roman culture and values. This did not go without resistance. Of all the complications encountered by the Eowynid Kings of Britannia, the most recalcitrant was by far the druids. Described by the Romans as priests and judges both, little else is known about them with any certainty. Both Roman and Britannian accounts nevertheless put them at the center of resistance to Eowynid rule, encouraging and helping to organize disobedience and even outright revolt. It is worth noting that the force sent to crush the druids in their stronghold at Ynys Mon (later Anglesey) was made up entirely of Romans, under the command of Suetonius Paulinus. Dewrder's own soldiers may have been unwilling to carry out the task themselves. The destruction of Ynys Mon marked the effective destruction of druidic culture and the end of their role in resisting Roman and Eowynid rule. But it was the revolt of the Iceni tribe, located in what is now Norfolk, that would truly go down in history. It began with the death of Prasutagus, King of the Iceni and client of Dewrder. In the hope of preserving his kingdom, Prasutagus had willed it jointly to Emperor Nero, Dewrder, and his own two daughters. The Iceni territories were promptly overrun and incorporated into the Britannian kingdom, with Tacitus adding that Prasutagus' wife Boudicca was flogged and their daughters raped. The histories disagree over who precisely was responsible, but the affair seems to have been a joint effort by Romans and Britannians alike. The result was a full-scale revolt, first by the Iceni, then spreading across Britannia. Boudicca's followers ambushed and destroyed a Britannian army, and then a Roman legion sent to reinforce it, before proceeding to burn Camulodunum to the ground. Suetonius hurried back with his legions but was unable to prevent the destruction of Londinium and Verulamium. Supported by Rome, Britannian kings extended their rule to the north and east, even into the lands later known as Scotland. The Britannian legend claims that they came to rule the whole of the British Isles, including Ireland, but there is nothing to substantiate this. At the turning of the 4th and 5th centuries, these glory days came to an end. Weakened by civil wars, invasion, and economic and social strife, the Western Roman Empire had long been in decline. The legions were finally withdrawn sometime in the first decade of the 5th century, leaving the Britannians to fend for themselves in an increasingly hostile world. Attacked by Picts from the north, 'Scoti' from Ireland, and Germanic and Scandinavian raiders from across the sea, Britannia entered its own long decline. The economy deteriorated as Imperial trade networks collapsed, and whole cities were abandoned as urban life ceased to be viable. The historian St Gildas, writing in the 6th century, gives the name of Britannia's ruler as Vortigern. Curiously Gildas does not name him as King, but rather as ''tyrannus superbus, implying him to be a usurper or warlord of some kind. The Britannian legend portrays him as a cruel and ineffectual tyrant and mirrors Gildas by having him invite Saxon mercenaries to shore up his rule. Taking land in payment for their services, the Saxons established themselves in Britannia, along with others such as the Angles and Jutes. For whatever reason, they turned on the Britannians and carved out kingdoms of their own. Pendragon The two centuries that follow are shrouded in mystery, concealed from human knowledge by a lack of written records. The Britannian legend fills the gap in its own special way, with the exploits of the Pendragon dynasty; otherwise known as the Artorian dynasty, so-named for its most famous member. Placing the Arthur of song and story in real history is at best fraught with difficulty, at worst nigh-impossible. What is known is that the Britannians enjoyed a brief period of stability, despite Germanic invaders having overrun much of the country. This stability and success went so far as to allow the establishment of colonies in France and Spain. The legacy of the former, Armorica, lives on as modern Brittany. Britannian legend lays this golden age at the feet of Uther Pendragon, and his better-remembered son Arthur. Indeed, this period (or the stories told of it) can be said to form the basis of modern Britannian culture. The legend places Uther as the descendant of Gwarth, the deposed King of ancient Britannia. The tyrant Vortigern somehow became aware of Uther's heritage and sought to imprison him, but did not destroy him for fear of a curse from the wizard Merlin. Vortigern's death at the hands of the Saxons allowed Uther to escape into the wilderness, where over time he rose to become a leader of warriors. During his career, he acquired the name Pendragon, a name which has itself attracted its fair share of storytelling. Some tales ascribed it to him owning a pet dragon or being a tamer of dragons. One theory even claimed he had acquired the secret of Greek Fire from the distant Eastern Roman Empire. A simpler, but more likely theory ascribed it to his use of a dragon as his symbol. The origins of Uther's son Arthur are even less clear than his own. The Britannian legend puts him simply as the son of Uther by his wife Igraine, the 19th-century version dismissing the more fanciful accounts as slander. Similarly, much of the mythological content of his life, such as drawing Excalibur from the stone, was removed in the 'official' version. Nevertheless treated as fact is his marriage to Guinevere, his assembling of the Knights of the Round Table, his victory at Mount Badon (around 500 AD according to Gildas) and his death at the hands of Mordred at the Battle of Camlann. His death brought about the chaos and civil war described by Gildas, and the resultant collapse of what remained of Britannia. The Anglo-Saxons came to dominate the southern and eastern portion of Britannia, while the Britannians themselves lingered on to the north and west. These holdouts included Dumnonia in the south, the 'Welsh' kingdoms of Dyfed, Gwynedd, and Powys in the west, and Elmet, Rheged, Gododdin, and Strathclyde further north. Some of these retained their independence from Saxon rule for many decades, but they were only ever a shadow of the Britannia that had once been. The Saxons enjoyed nearly three centuries of dominance, absorbing several of the Britannian successor kingdoms. These glory days came to an end as the ninth century began, as Scandinavian warriors launched plundering raids against the Saxon kingdoms. History would dub these marauders 'Vikings', for the Norse term meaning raiders. Between their legendary seamanship and their excellent ships, they could strike and retreat as they pleased, even sailing up rivers to attack villages and towns that thought themselves safe. Neither the divided Saxons nor the weakened Britannians could stop them, and by 867 they had overrun the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria and would go on to conquer much of the country for themselves. Only in the reign of Alfred the Great of Wessex, from 871 to 899, did the Saxons finally turn the tide. For all his victories, Alfred's true legacy was something far greater. It was a country called England. As the fortunes of the Saxons waxed and waned, the last Britannians clung on in distant places. Of these holdouts, the largest was a kingdom known to history as Alt Clut, but whose rulers called it Britannia. Located in Strathclyde, this last remnant was well-placed to avoid the worst attentions of the Saxons. Doubtless many of the Britannian refugees who ended up there hoped that it might prove the launchpad for an eventual reclamation of the entire country. But with the Saxons to the south, the Picts to the north-east, the Gaels of Dal Riata to the west, the rival Britannian holdout of Gododdin to the east, Alt-Clut had more immediate problems. The Britannians had to wait for their time to come, but come it did. As Viking power waned, the rulers of Strathclyde saw their chance. They expanded their lands at the Vikings' expense, acquiring the Brythonic-speaking Cumbria to the south. Though they lost some northern territory to the newly-founded Kingdom of Alba, the Britannians managed to expand further to the south and west, their borders reaching to the River Tyne. This, invariably, brought the revived Britannia into conflict with the rising power of England. How Britannia found the strength to resist the Vikings, let alone overrun a considerable portion of their territory, remains unclear. Contemporary accounts describe an army not much different from those of the English and the Vikings, and some hint that the Britannians marched alongside Viking allies. The Britannian legend even claims that some Viking warlords swore allegiance to Britannia's Kings. A possible explanation is a religious conflict, with both the legend and other accounts claiming that these particular Vikings were Celtic Christians, as opposed to the Roman Catholicism of the English and the Paganism still preferred by many Vikings. It is equally likely that the Britannians merely took advantage of a weakened, divided Danelaw. Sic Transit Gloria Britannia would gain even more with the accession of Edward the Elder to the throne of Wessex in 899 AD. Doubtless preferring to have Britannia as an ally than an enemy, Edward offered the hand of his daughter Eadhild to Britannia's new King, Malcolm. Their marriage in 924, the first of many intermarriages between the two Royal families, did not merely bind Britannia and Wessex together as allies. It also sowed the seeds for the long-dreamed-of revival of the ancient Kingdom of Britannia. Edward died that same year, replaced by his son Aethelstan. Together, the royal brothers-in-law expanded their respective kingdoms at the expense of the Vikings, with the river Tees becoming the shared border. Both fought side by side at the epic battle of Brunanburh against the Scots and their Viking allies, their victory stabilizing the land, but leaving them militarily weakened. Though both suffered Norse raids from time to time, relations remained relatively stable until the reign of Aethelred the Unready, beginning in 978. His failures as King were many, but perhaps the worst was ordering the massacre of all Danish men in England on St Brice's Day in 1002. This deed provoked or was a convenient excuse for, King Svein 'Forkbeard' of Denmark to invade in 1013. Aethelred proved as ineffective on the battlefield as on the throne, and he fled to France. His son Edmund, disgusted by his father's weakness, chose to remain and carry on the fight; his valor earning him the nickname 'Ironside'. He established himself in the Midlands and sought help from Britannia to the north. Svein died in 1014, and his son Cnut was forced to withdraw to Denmark when Aethelred returned with an army. But Edmund's anger still burned, and he defied his father by marrying the widow Ealdgyth, who was reputed to be of Royal Britannian blood. Father and son squared off, but the timing proved fatal, as Cnut launched his own invasion in 1015, overrunning much of the country. Aethelred fled once again, and Edmund took up the fight alongside his principal ally, King Duncan of Britannia. Both fought hard, but Cnut was his father's equal in the skills of war, and many Saxons accepted his rule, preferring his strength to Aethelred's weakness and incompetence. When the armies faced off one last time at Assandun in October of 1016, it was Cnut who emerged victoriously. With Duncan dead, and his army destroyed, a sick and dying Edmund accepted a peace treaty which allowed him to retain Wessex, though with Cnut as his heir. His death the next month left Cnut as King of the whole of England, whose resources he promptly turned against Britannia. By 1020 he had conquered up to the Scottish border, and although his line would not outlast him long, he would be remembered as Cnut the Great. After Cnut's death in 1035, the newly-unified England was ruled-over by his sons Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut until the latter's death in 1042. The beneficiary was Edward, son of Aethelred the Unready and his second wife Emma of Normandy, who had married Cnut after her husband's death. This made him the half-brother of not only Edmund Ironside, but Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut. Edward used this to maximum effect, presenting himself as an Englishman to the English and a Britannian to the Britannians. He further deepened his connection to his Britannian subjects by marrying Enid, a Britannian princess, and daughter of the late King Duncan. This highly symbolic event helped stabilize relations between the English, Britannian, and Scandinavian communities, continuing the work of Cnut. Harold Godwinson But all was not well around the throne of England. The most powerful man after Edward was Godwin, Earl of Wessex. A consummate survivor, Godwin had been a loyal servant of Aethelred, then Cnut, and both of his sons. Edward had reason to be suspicious of Godwin, for he was widely suspected of having murdered his older brother Alfred, a charge Godwin always denied. Godwin, in turn, had reason to worry, for when Edward returned from exile in Normandy he brought with him many Norman courtiers and followers, to whom he gave lands and important positions. In 1045 Godwin asserted himself by persuading or forcing Edward to divorce his wife Enid, who had failed to bear him a child and replace her with his own daughter Edith. Rumors abounded that Enid had borne Edward a son, who had been spirited away lest Godwin have him killed. The truth may never be known. Edward neither forgot nor forgave the humiliation, and tensions simmered for a further six years in which he failed or refused to impregnate Edith. He made his move against Godwin in 1051, staging a fight between the people of Dover and the retinue of his brother-in-law, Count Eustace of Boulogne. Forced to choose between disobeying his King and punishing his own people with fire and sword, Godwin chose rebellion, only to flee to Flanders when the uprising fizzled. Edward's victory did not last long, for Godwin returned the next year with an army, and the King's support evaporated. Deprived of his Norman courtiers and reduced to little more than a puppet King, Edward turned increasingly to religion. He would forever afterward be known as 'the Confessor.' Godwin did not long enjoy his victory. He died in 1053, replaced as Earl of Wessex and foremost over-mighty subject by his son Harold Godwinson, much to the annoyance of Edward's Britannian subjects. They had not forgotten the way Enid had been treated, and many may have believed in the rumored son and heir. Their ill-feeling was made all the worse by the rule of Harold's brother Tostig, made Earl of Northumbria in 1055. Heavy-handed and greedy, Tostig alienated Britannian, Saxon, and Dane alike. When in 1065 the Northumbrian lords rebelled against Tostig, Britannians supported them in great numbers. Faced with civil war, Harold put the good of the kingdom above brotherly love, and Tostig fled to Scandinavia, vowing revenge. The Normans But if the Britannians resented the power of Harold Godwinson, this was as nothing to the hatred he provoked in William, Duke of Normandy. Regarding himself as the rightful heir to Edward's throne, William had in 1064 managed to extract an oath of support from Harold, reputedly on holy relics and almost certainly under duress. When Edward died in 1066, Harold broke his oath and accepted the crown. He readied himself to resist a Norman invasion, but the first challenge came in the north when King Harald Hardrada of Norway landed a fleet of three-hundred ships at Tynemouth. Supported by the exiled Tostig and his followers, Harald sought to take the throne of England for himself. Harold rushed north, and miraculously managed to defeat and kill both Harald and Tostig at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. It is at that moment when a Britannian nobleman named Ellyll vi Bretan finally made his move. His family, the House of Bretan, claimed descent from Alba Bretanus, the biological daughter of High King Gwarth and the adoptive daughter of Atticus Bretanus, thus making the Bretans the descendants of the Hero-King Eowyn. According to the Britannian legend, the youngest daughter of Gwarth, an infant named Arwen, was found by a Roman soldier named Atticus Bretanus. Bretanus presented the baby to Aulus Plautius. Plautius, out of respect for Gwarth due to being a descendant of Eowyn, let Bretanus adopt the baby, who was then dubbed Alba Bretanus. Whether or not this actually happened, the legend would prove crucial in the centuries to come. For Ellyll vi Bretan, he had seen both the threat and opportunity William presented. Ellyll had secretly sent a letter to William, promising to aid him in his conquest of England in exchange that he keep his lands and titles. William agreed to Ellyll’s terms. When William landed in Kent, Harold and his vassal Ellyll came south to face him, only for the latter to betray and kill Harold and aid William in winning the Battle of Hastings. William was crowned King of England in December and named Ellyll vi Bretan the Duke of Hastings. However, it would take many years before England was pacified under William’s rule. As England was governed by the Norman and later the Plantagenet dynasties, the name of Britannia would be lost to history. The English would later claim the figure of Arthur for themselves, his story retold by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century. His account includes many elements taken for granted in Arthurian stories, such as his fathering by Uther Pendragon upon Igraine under cover of Merlin's magic, his marriage with Guinevere, and his death at the hands of his nephew Mordred at Camlann. Other popular elements, such as the city of Camelot, the Round Table, and Mordred as Arthur's son by his sister Morgan le Fay, were added in the romances of later centuries; by such contributors as Thomas Malory, Chretien du Troyes, and even Geoffrey Chaucer. But the Neo-Britannian kingdom that survived for nearly five hundred years largely vanished from history, its Royal line lost along with that of Wessex, its people and culture absorbed into a greater whole. It lingered on in song and story, and in the traditions of a handful of noble families. Eight centuries would pass before the Britannian Legend would have a chance to express itself. The Plantagenet dynasty ruled England from 1126 to 1485, when King Richard III met his end at the Battle of Bosworth Field. His replacement as King, Henry Tudor, was the first of what would prove a mighty dynasty. He was succeeded in 1491 by his son Henry VIII, whose long and tumultuous reign would see England remove itself from the Roman Catholic Church. He, in turn, was succeeded by his son Edward VI in 1547, who is remembered primarily for his extreme Protestantism, and his attempt to remove his half-sisters from the succession in favor of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey. His death by tuberculosis in 1553 brought his half-sister Mary to the throne, who sought to reverse his religious reforms in favor of Roman Catholicism. It is for her ruthless brutality in this cause that she is remembered, perhaps unfairly. She was succeeded in 1558 by her half-sister Elizabeth, who in the course of her reign managed to stabilize England and lead it to power and prosperity. The Tudors It was during Mary I's reign that the name of Britannia rose once again, in the form of Theon el Bretan, Duke of Hastings. Returning to Theon el Bretan, like many of the northern nobles, he was a Catholic, and he professed undying devotion to Mary. But when Mary commanded in 1558 that he marry her Protestant sister Elizabeth, Theon jumped at the chance. Mary was dying, and the marriage was a last-ditch attempt to preserve her re-Catholicization of England. But despite this, Mary had no intention of allowing Theon to become King of England, as a letter to Elizabeth shows; “...he shall not have from my hand the crown of England, and I charge you never to grant it. For he is of that northern race that was Kings in ancient time, and would fain be Kings again.” The marriage went ahead, with Theon attempting to get Elizabeth pregnant per the marriage customs. This he failed to do, leading to rumors both of his own impotence and that Elizabeth was using various underhand means to prevent pregnancy. He eventually succeeded in impregnating Elizabeth, but too late, for Mary died in November of 1558; Elizabeth was subsequently crowned Queen in her own right, with the pregnancy remaining unconfirmed until several weeks later. Elizabeth gave birth to a healthy son in August of 1559, naming him Henry. Theon was permitted to see the child and would have a limited part of his upbringing. Surprisingly, Theon voiced no opposition to this edict, as proven in one of his journal entries: “I do not care about trying to gain more ''power via my marriage to her Majesty. The only thing that matters is my dear son, Henry, for he is precious to me, and all that I ask of my son is for him to be a good and just king. Nothing more. Nothing less.” Perhaps it is because of this mentality, that Elizabeth allowed Theon to be more active in Henry’s upbringing. Despite this, however, he found himself to be ridiculed by other nobles due to his refusal to make a move for the crown. Thomas Howard, Earl of Norfolk, is said to have mockingly dubbed him the 'Duke of Britannia', referring to his boasted heritage. Theon embraced the title and took it with pride and dignity, an act that would pride the House of Bretan for centuries to come. Meanwhile, a lingering complication in Elizabeth's reign was her relationship with her son. Henry had inherited his mother's formidable intellect and his grandfather's hot blood; a dangerous combination at the best of times. Born in the year of her coronation, he would wait forty-five years to ascend the throne, a delay he endured with a remarkable grace and patience. But for all that, there was tension aplenty between mother and son, though not over any great difference of opinion, or any wrong that Elizabeth might have done Henry. As William Cecil once quipped, the dread lieth not in their enmity, but in their likeness; mother and son were simply too similar to get along peacefully. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was broadly able to manage her brilliant and increasingly restless son, usually by the expedience of slowly expanding his responsibilities. he most significant of these was being responsible for overseeing the settling and maintenance of overseas colonies, a cause he pursued with great enthusiasm. The First Golden Age Elizabeth would face many challenges in the course of her long reign. Of those, among the most significant was the threat posed by Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. Mary regarded herself as the rightful Queen of England as well as Scotland, a claim in which she enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the Papacy. It was feared by many in England that Mary would use Scotland as a springboard for an invasion, backed by French and possibly even Spanish forces. This never materialized, due in part to Mary's difficulties in bringing her fractious kingdom under control, while France and Spain had plans of their own for England. Mary was ultimately let down by a combination of naivete and desire, leading her to unwise choices in friends, lovers, and husbands. Her second husband - her cousin Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley - was by all accounts a drunken wastrel with a penchant for domestic violence, whose only meaningful contribution was fathering Mary's heir, James. Mary was later implicated in her husband's death in February of 1567, and in April of that year she was abducted by her current suitor and ally - James Hepburn, Lord Bothwell - and taken to his castle at Dunbar. A month later they were married, leading to a revolt led by Mary's half-brother, James Stuart, Earl of Moray. Having captured Mary and forced Bothwell into exile, James declared himself Regent with the support of Scotland's Presbyterian nobles; the Lords of the Congregation. Elizabeth's reign is remembered as a great success. She successfully steered her country through forty-five difficult and vulnerable years, seeing off multiple rebellions and at least one major invasion attempt. Henry took the throne on his mother's death in 1603, by which point he was already married and the father of three children. His Queen was Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of the Earl of Moray, giving him and his descendants a blood tie to the throne of Scotland; a choice that had not sat well with his mother. Henry IX's reign is remembered primarily for colonial expansion. Under his rule, English colonies and trading posts in North America and India were expanded, and a large-scale program of colonization begun in Ireland; this was known as the 'Plantation of Ulster'. North America was colonized in a series of individual efforts, led by a mixture of private individuals and companies. The most famous of these was the Virginia Company, which established Henrytown in 1604 as part of their Virginia colony. The success rate of these early colonies was mixed, but Henry's determination drove the project on, to the point of personally financing several Caribbean colonies. Experiments in the cultivation of cash crops such as sugar and tobacco proved highly profitable, providing the Crown with a lucrative source of income. It is in this context that Henry's reign took a dark turn. One problem that had consistently dogged colonization of the New World was a shortage of willing manpower. Europeans had been traveling to North America throughout his and his mother's reigns in a steady trickle; their number included religious minorities such as the Puritans, the latter best remembered for those who arrived in 1620 aboard the Mayflower. '' Though some were willing to accept the authority of the English Crown, they were not enough to meet England's needs. During his mother's reign, Henry had found two methods to be effective, and he expanded both during his own reign. One was to offer incentives, such as money or land; a policy Henry limited to would-be colonists with vital skills due to the expense involved. The other was the enforced transportation of convicted criminals, a practice Henry would come to depend on. He greatly expanded the number of crimes punishable by transportation, until his laws were popularly known as the 'Sail Code'. The experience of these unfortunates depended on the severity of their crimes. Those convicted of lesser offenses, such as theft or vagrancy, would step off the ships as free men, able to seek their own fortunes. Those found guilty of more serious crimes were sent as indentured labor, regarded even at the time as slavery by any other name. Crown and Commonwealth By the time Henry died in 1625, England was a prosperous and powerful state, one of Europe's rising stars. But success concealed deep-rooted and festering divisions, both political and religious. As the threat of invasion receded, the unity of English and Scottish Protestantism began to break down as old divisions resurfaced. Though the Anglican Church encompassed a broad majority, there existed a substantial and growing minority of more extreme Protestants, notably the Puritans. They rejected the religious settlement the Church represented; its bishops, vestments, and ceremonies were a little too Catholic for their liking. Their ill-feeling was given greater vehemence by a regular stream of horror stories from Europe, itself in the grip of a series of conflicts that would come to be known as the Thirty Years War. Hard-line Protestants were outraged by reports of atrocities against their co-religionists and infuriated by the unwillingness of Crown or Parliament to do anything about it. To many, the only possible answer was a Catholic conspiracy at the heart of government. The ascension of Henry's son Edward to the throne in 1625 brought this conflict to the surface. Edward was different from his father and grandmother in many respects. A childhood spent caught in the middle between his parents and his formidable grandmother had bred in him a tendency to be charming, to tell others what they wanted to hear in order to extricate himself from hard choices. This could be useful at times, but it also gained him a reputation for being two-faced and untrustworthy. He had a horror of conflict and recoiled from what he saw as the bigotry and intolerance of the hardliners, taking refuge in the color and ritual of high-church Christianity. Worse, in the eyes of hardliners, was his support for Charles I, then King of Scotland. The two Kings were second cousins via their grandparents - Mary Queen of Scots and her half-brother James - and brothers-in-law via Charles' sister Margaret, who married Edward in 1615. Charles, like his father James VI, sought to rule as an absolute monarch and shared Edward's high-church tastes. This, along with his marriage to the French Princess Henrietta Maria, put him at odds with hardline Protestants in Scotland. The other center of resistance to the Crown was Parliament, an institution whose power had grown over the past century. By this point, it was bicameral, with the nobility being represented in the House of Lords and everyone else being represented in the House of Commons. In practice, the Commons were represented by a relative minority of rural gentry, elected via a limited franchise system developed in the 13th century. It could only be summoned by the King, and its primary purpose was to levy new taxes, granting the Crown revenue far in excess of what it would normally collect. The Commons had come to realize their importance over the years; the gentry, in particular, were the only ones with the authority and ability to collect new taxes at the local level. When combined with new religious and political ideals rising from the Reformation and the Renaissance respectively, the Parliamentarians began to get ideas. These included the notion, radical at the time, that Parliament should meet continuously whether the King summoned it or not. Even more radical was the idea that the King should be able to pass no new laws of any kind without Parliament's consent. The stage was set for a clash of personalities and ideas, with tragic consequences for all concerned. Edward found himself faced with a Parliament that protested loyalty while barraging him with demands he found both unreasonable and insulting. These included the dismissal of many of his closest servants and allies, an end to his high church policies, and that he give up his Caribbean monopolies. The latter was particularly important, for it was the one thing allowing Edward to govern without Parliamentary taxes, as well as maintaining the guard regiments left to him by his father. Edward responded by dismissing Parliament in 1629 and ruling alone for eleven years. The crisis came in 1638 when Scottish Presbyterians formed a 'National Covenant' and rose in arms against Charles. Forced to flee to England with his family and closest supporters, Charles turned to Edward for help, But Edward did not have the funds to raise a large enough army to oppose the Covenanters and was forced to summon Parliament in 1640. Parliament proved less than sympathetic, with many MPs siding openly with the Covenanters. Far from voting money and troops to support Charles, they raised a case against Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Edward's Lord Lieutenant in Ireland, who commanded the only real army at Edward's disposal. When an attempted impeachment failed for lack of evidence, Pym resorted to an Act of Attainder, which needed less evidence but required the King's seal. Edward initially refused, unwilling to destroy a loyal and capable servant on the basis of hearsay. His resistance confirmed all of Parliament's suspicions, while Parliament's determination to destroy Strafford confirmed all of Edward's prejudices in turn. In the end, Strafford wrote to Edward asking him to sign the attainder, and condemn him to death for the unity of the nation. Edward would neither forgive nor forget. Strafford's execution in 1641 sparked off of a full-scale uprising in Ireland. The revolt began as a coup attempt by Catholic Irish gentry, such as Phelim O'Neill and Rory O'Moore; their goal was to gain control of Ireland and negotiate for religious toleration and legal equality between the native Irish, the Catholic 'Old English' and the Protestant 'New English.' The authorities in Dublin over-reacted convinced that it heralded a general uprising by Catholic Irish against Protestant settlers. The brutality of their response merely widened the confrontation, and the prophecy became self-fulfilling as Catholic peasants attacked Protestant settlers; generally robbing and expelling them, in some cases killing them. The death toll is thought to have reached around twelve thousand, but English and Scottish pamphleteers put the number at anything up to two hundred thousand. The killings provoked a wave of hysteria throughout England, and whatever calming effect had arisen from Strafford's execution was undone. Amid the hysteria arose old stories of indestructible men, and witches with mind-controlling powers. In January 1641 Edward attempted to arrest five Parliamentary leaders, only to discover that they had fled. Fearing for his and his family's lives, Edward fled the city and met up with his guard regiments, which Parliament had forbidden him to bring into London. Seeing no alternative, Edward raised the Royal standard at Nottingham. The English Civil War had begun. War without an Enemy The English Civil War was a slow starter. Large pitched battles were comparatively rare in the early years, with much of the violence consisting of small-scale local clashes; in many cases little more than gang-fights. With their armies numbering only around 15,000 men each, neither side was willing to risk all on a decisive engagement. The first pitched battle, at Edgehill in October of 1642, was an indecisive affair. During 1643, Yorkshire and the West Country emerged as the major theatres of war; located as they were between the Royalist heartland of the North, Wales, and Cornwall, and the Parliamentarian heartland of London and much of the south. Edward rather cautiously kept his main army at Oxford, at the center of a Royalist salient. On the whole, the major cities tended to favor Parliament, while rural areas favored the King. 1643 saw a gradual shift in the territory as both sides sought to consolidate their heartlands and isolate enemy territories. The Royalists consolidated their position in Wales and secured the West Country through to Cornwall; creating a Royalist crescent from northern Wales down to the south coast. Meanwhile, the Parliamentarians managed to push north and take Lancashire, cutting the Royalists off from their territory in the north and north-east. All the while, the war remained a curiously genteel affair; as both sides sought to end the war by negotiation. Even relatively hardline Parliamentarians sought to keep the King on his throne, while Edward knew that his best hope of re-establishing acceptable civil government after the war was with the cooperation of Parliament. This only added to the general indecisiveness of the conflict and stoked frustration in certain quarters. The tribulations of the Parliamentarian cause saw the rise of one of the great names in English history, Oliver Cromwell. A Puritan MP who had fought in the war from the beginning, Cromwell had no time for the endless squabbling of the Parliamentarian leadership. Unlike most of them, he understood that the Royalists believed in the monarchy and were willing to fight and die for it, giving them an advantage over the disunited Parliamentarian forces. His answer was to create an organized, professional army, with hardline Puritanism as its ideological glue. Cromwell first tested these ideas with his own regiment of cavalry, dubbed the 'Ironsides.' Combining the dash and valor of the Royalist cavalry with iron discipline and religious fervor, they swept all before them. This approach was expanded to the entire army in 1645, when Parliament established the 'New Model Army', with Cromwell as second-in-command. The New Model saw its first major victory at Naseby, forcing Edward to retreat north while the New Model conquered Royalist territory in the south-west. A subsequent victory at Langport destroyed the last Royalist field army. Edward was forced to flee north and spent the next year vainly attempting to replenish his forces. In May of 1646, he surrendered himself to a Scottish Covenanter army in Nottinghamshire. To the Parliamentarians, it must have seemed like a victory. But it was not to be. Edward's cousin Charles remained free and was even then in secret negotiation with the Covenanters. Fearful of being sidelined by the hardline Puritan faction growing amid the Parliamentarians, the Covenanters signed a treaty with Charles in December of 1647, agreeing to restore him to his throne in return for religious freedom. Despite this, Charles had difficulty in convincing his people to attack England on behalf of his cousin. His desire to do so was driven as much by dynastic ambitions as a sense of loyalty to Edward, as his son Charles was betrothed to Edward's youngest sister Elizabeth. But the Scots were war-weary and reluctant to invade England for the sake of a King who did not share their faith; even if that King's enemies were little better. It would take a drastic turn of events in England to change their minds. For Parliament, the growing influence of Puritan hardliners was bad enough. But a new force was rising in the shadow of the New Model Army, and gaining an ever greater hold over the Puritan movement. It was a group of officers, theologians, and political thinkers, who sought to reconcile the reformist zeal of the Puritans with the practical necessities of government. Coming to be known as the Conclave of Saints, or simply the Conclave, their plan was to take total control of the country and reorganize it into a perfect society in which a purified church and a godly state were ones and the same, and every man was equal under God. Their ideas won them support in the New Model Army, and they took advantage of the suffering wrought by the war to build a popular militia of sorts, known simply as the Poor Men. Edward's capture in 1646 was a turning point for the Conclave, who called loudest of all for the death of the King. Their numbers alone made them difficult to ignore, but the willingness of the Poor Men to riot on their behalf made them downright dangerous. Suspicious, but realizing that he could not afford to fight the Conclave, Cromwell went along with their policy. Edward was put on trial, charged with personal responsibility for all the death and destruction inflicted by the war. The death toll is thought to have been around three hundred thousand, or six percent of the population. Perhaps knowing that he was doomed, with a mob of Poor Men surrounding the High Court of Justice, Edward did not even offer a plea. Needless to say, he was found guilty, in a trial that was by both contemporary and modern standards a farce, and executed by beheading on August 10, 1647. His death sent shockwaves across a Europe nigh-inured to bloodshed by the horrors of the Thirty Years War. None was more horrified than his cousin Charles, who is said to have turned deathly pale and collapsed in his seat upon hearing the news. This, combined with word of the excesses of the Conclave and the Poor Men, was finally enough to win the support of the Scottish Parliament, and the people, for war against England. Reign of the Bishops The war proved a disaster for the Scots. Despite the horror at Edward's execution and widespread fears of possible English aggression, neither the Scottish Parliament nor Charles' advisors could agree on the best course of action. As a result, the Scottish invasion of April 1648 was a confused, overly-cautious affair; despite the best efforts of its leader, the Crown Prince Charles. The Scottish army was large and comparatively well-armed, but political divisions between its commanders, especially between Covenanters and former Royalists such as the Marquis of Montrose, weakened its cohesion. Contradictory orders from Edinburgh led to slow progress; though Charles was able to persuade the traditionally Royalist city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to open its gates to him. This was ironic, for the city had twice endured capture by the Scots since the beginning of the crisis; first in 1640, and again in 1644 after a seven-month siege. Cromwell responded by marching north at the head of the New Model Army, defeating the Scots near Durham and forcing them to retreat north. In no mood to besiege Newcastle, Cromwell bypassed the city and pursued the Scots, destroying their army at Dunbar and taking Edinburgh shortly afterward. King Charles and his family were forced to flee abroad. As Cromwell mopped up in Scotland and turned his attention to Ireland, the Conclave continued to grow in power. Taking advantage of its ability to intimidate Parliament and raise popular agitation, the Conclave took effective control of the Church of England, executing or imprisoning any clergy who refused to cooperate. Church and state were reorganized, with all civic and religious authority being centralized in the traditional Bishoprics (and new Bishoprics established where necessary). The Conclave's members took the title of Bishop for themselves; justifying it on the basis that it was a title used by the early pre-Roman Church. Though Parliament was technically the highest authority in the land, by 1651 the Conclave had taken effective control of the administrative structure of England; and would soon do the same for Scotland and Ireland. The British Isles would be, by the middle of the 1650s, under the control of an organized theocracy. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland is by far his most notorious and is remembered primarily for the siege (and subsequent massacre) of the town of Drogheda, from 3rd to 11th September 1649. Despite fierce resistance, and considerable losses to hunger and disease - made worse by his army's primitive logistical system - Cromwell brought Ireland under effective control by 1652. Even then, this was facilitated by allowing Irish soldiers to seek employment abroad, in any army not currently at war with the Commonwealth of England. It was at that point that Cromwell began to truly realize the depth of the Conclave's ambitions. Though he approved of its efficient organization and many of its goals, he was unsettled by some of its more extreme activities; including the banning of Christmas and various public entertainments. Rumors that the Conclave was reorganizing the Poor Men into a formal army under its own control finally drew Cromwell back to London. He spent the next year attempting to rally Parliament and moderate the Conclave's activities, all to no avail. On 20 April 1653, the Conclave finally made its move, ordering soldiers to arrest Cromwell and shut down Parliament. As he was arrested Cromwell made his last great speech; ''“You say you are saints and righteous men, keepers of the peace of England. You who have made God a tyrant, Christ the jailor of mankind, and his holy word a lash upon the backs of honest men. You are no saints. I say you are no saints, nor righteous men. God have mercy on us. God save England from you.” Oliver Cromwell, one of the most unlikely and arguably among the greatest generals and statesmen in British history, was unceremoniously executed two days later. The rule of the Conclave would continue for seven more years; a period regarded as one of the darkest in British history. Without the political instincts of Cromwell, or someone like him, no one remained to stand between the Conclave and its ideals of a perfect, godly society. This, as much as anything else, would prove its downfall. Though later comparisons to totalitarianism are exaggerated, the Conclave's interest could reach almost every aspect of daily life, with local Bishops having almost complete discretion to act as they saw fit. Royalist plots, both real and imagined, were a constant concern, and some Bishops were known to have burned whole villages in order to stamp them out. Even without this, ordinary people were annoyed by the endless interference of the Conclave in their daily lives, backed as it was by the power of life and death. Traditional celebrations and feast days were forbidden, as were activities such as gambling, drinking alcohol, attending theatres, wrestling, and horse-racing. Death penalty offenses included atheism, blasphemy, holding 'obscene' opinions, and even adultery. Return of the King A backlash was all but inevitable, and the signs were clear by 1658. The Conclave's army, on which it depended to maintain control, was overgrown, ideologically contaminated, and growing mutinous. The remaining nobility found themselves under increasing suspicion, as the most likely leaders of a revolt. But the real symbol of resistance and the Conclave's eventual downfall were a group of young men and women known as the Seven Bastards. The illegitimate sons and daughters of Orys de Bretan (who was killed by the Conclave), they were Brandon the Builder (due to his intelligence in crafting weapons of war), Lann the Clever (due to deceiving his enemies), Artys the Falcon (due to his swift ruthlessness in battle), Garth Greenhand (due to his love towards animals and nature), Nymeria the Iron-handed (due to being merciless in battle) , Axel the Trout (due to intimdating his enemies in battle), and Azor the Lightbringer (due to cleansing the “darkness” of the Conclave). They were linked to a rash of attacks on the Conclave, which included the assassination of Bishops, and the burning of Churches, tithe barns, and Bishop's Palaces. The Conclave reacted in the only way it knew how by lashing out in a paranoid rage. Even Conclave members, those moderates regarded as dangerous backsliders by the hardliners, were not safe. As for their motives, the Seven Bastards had lost their father, Orys de Bretan, to the Conclave, while the rest of the House of Bretan fled with the royal family to the Netherlands. As such, they swore vengeance against the Conclave. They started this by freeing a village that was about to be put to the sword by the Conclave. They killed the bishops and their guards and took control of the village, being welcomed as liberators in the process. Their actions encouraged nobles and commoners to instigate a resistance against the Conclave. The eventual leader of the resistance and the object of all its hopes was Charles Stuart, son of King Charles I of Scotland, and husband of Elizabeth Tudor, the rightful Queen of England. By this point, the couple was holed up in the Netherlands, the center of a small but growing Royalist exile movement, and plotting his eventual return. Charles I had died, some say of a broken heart, shortly after his arrival in exile. But their resources were limited, and the Conclave's assassins relentless. The man who truly made their return possible was Major General James su Bretan, son of Orys de Bretan, Duke of Hastings, and commander of the Conclave's Army of Scotland, but in reality, was a spy for Charles Stuart, reporting to him on every move the Conclave made. Secretly a die-hard Royalist, Bretan had survived the Conclave's suspicious attentions by carefully cultivating the image of a blunt, ale-swilling soldier's soldier; a man too stupid and simple-minded to pose a threat. But this image concealed a shrewd political mind and a deep-rooted sense of honor. Like many of his fellow generals, he was growing weary of the Conclave's tyranny and incompetence, and fearful of the civil disorder that its seemingly inevitable collapse would unleash. By the time the final collapse began, in October of 1659, Bretan was in effective control of Scotland. This was, as much as anything else, due to the weakness of the Scottish Bishops; who had become dependent upon him to maintain order, and the collaboration of the Seven Bastards. Precisely what started the final crisis is unclear, but the most commonly-accepted narrative is a series of riots in London, sparked off when a soldier shot dead a child whom, he claimed, had been singing The Seven Bastards will have their due. The riots spread throughout the city, to'' the point where the garrison could not contain them. Several members of the Conclave were killed, and the rest forced to flee, only to be captured by soldiers under the command of Major General John Lambert. Lambert was part of a clique of hard-line anti-Royalists known as the Wallingford House Party; named for the home of another member, Major General Charles Fleetwood, in which they met. Seeing that the Conclave was running England into the ground, yet fearing for their lives if the Monarchy were restored, they launched a coup-d'etat; establishing a Committee of Safety on 26 October. It was obvious to Bretan and the Seven Bastards that the Committee was exchanging one tyranny for another; a tyranny no more acceptable to the public than that of the Conclave. Their response was to lead an army south, crossing the River Tweed at Coldstream on 2 January 1660. The early part of their march took them through Berwick, Newcastle, and York; whose garrisons they added to their army. Lambert tried to gather his garrisons and mobile units into a usable field army but had insufficient funds with which to pay them. Bretan and the Seven Bastards, apparently aware of this, continued their advance while carefully avoiding Lambert's forces; denying him the pitched battle he desperately needed. On 3 February, Bretan's army entered London; Lambert's forces melting away ahead of him. Once in control of the city, they began communicating with Charles and Elizabeth in Brussels; who hoped to use his takeover as a vehicle for their own return. Matters immediately became complicated, as the differing personalities of the two co-sovereigns-in-exile asserted themselves forcefully. Charles proved the more forgiving of the couple, expressing a willingness both to forgive those who had fought against his father and father-in-law (though not anyone directly involved in Edward's regicide) and to reign in cooperation with Parliament; at least up to a point. But Elizabeth was having none of it; her kill-list was considerably longer than her husband's, and she was determined to reclaim absolute power without condition. It took two months of tense negotiations before Charles was able to issue the Declaration of Breda in April, promising amnesty to all who would swear allegiance to the co-sovereigns and freedom of religion. Charles and Elizabeth returned to England in May, arriving in London on the 29th; their quarrels kept firmly in private. The couple were formally crowned as King and Queen of England and Scotland, their reigns backdated to the deaths of their respective fathers. As for the Seven Bastards, they were hailed as heroes for their fight against the Conclave and appeared before King Charles and Queen Elizabeth. They were knighted and, with the blessing of the King and Queen, formed their own houses rather than take the Bretan name. 7 houses were born that day: the House of Stark (founded by Brandon the Builder), the House of Lannister (founded by Lann the Clever), the House of Arryn (founded by Artys the Falcon), the House of Tyrell (founded by Garth Greenhand), the House of Martell (founded by Nymeria the Iron-handed), the House of Tully (founded by Axel the Trout), and the House of Targaryen (founded by Azor the Lightbringer). As these houses were of Bretan descent, they would be classified as Bretan branch houses, while James and his family would be classified as the Bretan main house. The Second Golden Age Ruling over the now-united kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Charles, and Elizabeth would preside over a long and much-needed period of peace and stability. With England and Scotland's governing institutions ruined by the political chaos of the past two decades, the co-rulers took the opportunity to rebuild them from the ground up. The Church was stripped of its legal and administrative authority, though certain taxes would still be collected on its behalf. The administration was reorganized around the traditional Counties, led by the restored Lord Lieutenants with the assistance of County Councils. Their responsibilities included the administration of justice, the collection of taxes, the organization of the militia, and the maintenance of vital infrastructure; such as roads and bridges. The counties, in turn, were formally subdivided into districts, replacing a variety of other subdivisions such as ridings, wapentakes, and tithings; though these lived on to some extent in the local culture. Districts were governed by Justices of the Peace, assisted by District Councils. In practice, the local gentry and nobility tended to dominate District and County Councils respectively; a state of affairs Charles and Elizabeth seem to have entirely intended. The exceptions to this rule were the chartered towns and cities, which were granted County status in their own right. Society reacted quickly to the return of the two monarchs, throwing off Puritan restrictions in favor of a new age of pleasure, artistic expression, and scientific inquiry. The Restoration spawned whole new genres of art, music, theatre, literature, and even fashion. It would even provide England with a new capital, as the Great Fire of London in 1666 largely destroyed the old city; leading Charles and Elizabeth to appoint Sir Christopher Wren to rebuild it on a new, European-style street plan. The Restoration laid the foundations for the aristocratic culture of modern Britannia, along with many aspects of its political and military systems. Charles initially disbanded the New Model Army, regarding it as politically unreliable and constitutionally dangerous. But subsequent circumstances would force him to reform it, in effect founding the modern Britannian army and navy. Though internal revolt and plots by anti-monarchist elements were constant threats, the greatest threat of all was the 'Sun King' Louis XIV of France, whose professional army and navy were the terror of Europe. Charles and Elizabeth were personally on good terms with Louis, and many aspects of their military organization were based on those of France; including the practice of putting regiments under the command of proprietary colonels. But the anti-French feeling was widespread, and the co-rulers' difficult relations with the Dutch Republic, which spilled over into a series of small wars, were deeply unpopular. The friendship between the British Isles and France was, for all the Royal goodwill, politically impossible. Charles finally died in 1685, possibly of uremia; though in practice he was all but tortured to death by his physicians, whose medical knowledge was woefully lacking by modern standards. Elizabeth ruled alone for five more years, finally dying in 1690. In accordance with his mother's last wishes, Parliament passed the 1690 Act of Union in time for her son Richard's coronation, allowing him to take the throne as King Richard IV of Great Britain. His first challenge was what history would call the Nine Years War with France, which had been ongoing since 1688. The primary cause of the war was France's attempts to acquire neighboring territory, with a view to creating an impregnable fortress network designed by Sébastien de Vauban. Aside from the new Britain, five other powers would take the field against France; eventually leading to a compromise peace in 1697. It would not be the last of the so-called 'Cabinet Wars' to end so indecisively. Richard oversaw a great expansion of British power, with his efforts focused primarily on North America. His reign would see a series of European wars, which would make the name of a certain Aurion la Targaryen. Attaining his first commission through the patronage of the King's uncle - James, Duke of York - Targaryen gained a reputation for physical courage at the Siege of Maastricht in 1673, when he fought in a thirty-man Forlorn Hope alongside no less a personage than Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan; the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' most famous character. He would receive his first independent command in the Spanish Netherlands in 1688 and fight well enough to win King Richard's personal attention. So high had he risen in the King's favor that, in 1700, he was tasked with organizing a new European coalition against France; provoked by Louis' attempt to place his grandson on the Spanish throne. The War of Spanish Succession would drag on for thirteen years, ending in 1715 with another round of territorial exchanges. Targaryen would hold command for ten years, from 1702 to 1715, and win five great battlefield victories - Schellenberg, Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenaarde, and Malplaquet - as well as capturing thirty major towns, all the while fighting alongside the equally famous Prince Eugene of Savoy. Aurion la Targaryen would go down in history as the greatest general ever born in the British Isles. Richard's death in 1735 revealed the only great failure of his reign; his lack of an heir. Despite two marriages, none of his many children survived to adulthood. His heir presumptive, therefore, was his cousin James Francis, son of James Stuart and his second wife Mary of Modena. The only problem was that James had been baptized and raised a Catholic, at the ardent wish of his father, who had converted to the Roman church in 1669. But since his father's death in 1701, James had fallen under the influence of his various Protestant relations; notably his aunts Mary and Anne, and Mary's husband William, Prince of Orange; not to mention the King himself. With Richard's death, the pressure to convert to Anglicanism and thereby silence a rising tide of popular discontent grew all the stronger. Eventually, declaring that he found his late cousin's High Church Anglicanism "''quite tolerable", he gave in. James II's reign was, for the most part, a great success. It was under his rule that British power was first established in India, as Britain and France struggled for control of lucrative trade with the various Indian Princes; nominally presided-over by a decaying Mughal Empire. British policy decisively changed in 1757, when Mir Jafar, commander of the armies of the Nawab of Bengal, plotted with the British to overthrow his French-leaning master, with whom he had quarreled. The result was the Battle of Palashi, in which a small British army under Lady Obara li Martell trounced the Nawab's much larger army; a feat greatly assisted the Nawab's premature retreat from the battlefield, and Mir Jafar keeping his division out of the fighting. This was only the beginning of a series of wars and conquests that would, by the end of the century, bring most of the Indian subcontinent briefly under British rule. British power was also expanded in North America, during the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763; a war remembered mostly for the acquisition of Quebec, and the victory and martyrdom of General Rickard de Stark at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. When James died in 1766, he was succeeded by his son Henry Edward, who ruled as Henry X. In sharp contrast to his father, who had grown dour in his later years, Henry was handsome and charismatic, with a reputation for instinctive charm and at times a fine turn of phrase. But like those who went before him he was a devout believer in the Divine Right of Kings; that as King it was his right, and sacred responsibility, to wield absolute power for the good of all. On the face of it, this was no great problem, for Britain had enjoyed decades of prosperity and military glory under the rule of absolute monarchs; and bad memories of the alternative still lingered. Few if any wanted a return to the chaos of civil war or the tyranny of the Conclave. Beyond a deep-rooted but gradually fading fear of Catholicism, religious fervor had few attractions for the British people. The American Revolution (The Great Rebellion) However, in the British colonies in North America, the situation was very different. Though Puritanism had once exerted a powerful hold over the American mindset, it was gradually being replaced by a new set of ideas. Educated colonists, men of the Enlightenment such as Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin - to name but a few - had come to dream of a new kind of government and society. Being largely Deists, they rejected the idea of a 'Godly' society, preferring instead a secular society in which Church and State would be separate. They also tended to regard Parliament's defeat in the civil war to be a disaster, though opinions varied as the to the ultimate cause, and constructed many of their ideas for a new government on the basis of correcting Parliament's mistakes. They were also adherents of classical republicanism, holding selfless service to the state to be a citizen's highest duty and honor, in return for which he enjoyed a citizen's rights and privileges. In this they set themselves against the Versailles-influenced court culture developing in Britain; a culture of extravagance, flattery, backbiting, and influence-peddling, with the all-powerful King at the center of everything. For decades, fear of outside enemies - notably the French, Spanish, and Indians - had kept the colonists loyal. But the final defeat of France by 1763 removed this outside threat and left many colonists wondering why they paid such high taxes for an army and navy they neither wanted nor needed, controlled by a government that paid them little attention. Matters came to a head when Charles sought to bring colonial taxation in line with that of Britain, with the 1765 Stamp Act. In practice, this meant imposing a series of completely new taxes while enforcing others that had been quietly neglected by the more considerate Royal governors. This caused great anger among the colonists, who were reminded of the distinctly Parliamentarian notion that they could not, and should not, be taxed without their own consent. The situation was made worse by Henry’s obstinacy; he was determined that the colonists should pay what he saw as their fair share towards the upkeep and security of the empire that protected and nurtured them. Matters reached a head in December of 1773, when citizens of the port of Boston, Massachusetts, boarded a merchant ship and threw its cargo of tea into the harbor in a protest against government taxation policies. Imperial authorities reacted by closing the harbor until the tea was paid for, and by expanding the powers of Imperial governors. Henceforth they could appoint or dismiss officials, appoint jurors, and restrict public assembly at will. Outraged colonists responded by forming a Continental Congress in September of 1774, to form a united front against Royal tyranny. Charles responded in turn by dispatching troops to the colonies. What would come to be known as the American Revolution, or the Great Rebellion as the Britannians call it today, began as a series of police actions, as Royal troops attempted to disarm the colonists. Of these, the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775 are arguably the most significant. The British discovered that while American militia could not stand against them in open field, they were not easily defeated when able to take advantage of buildings or difficult terrain. As a result, they quickly found that while they could maintain control of the towns, the countryside belonged to the rebels. By the same token, rebel forces were unable to oust Imperial troops from fortified positions, as they lacked heavy artillery. This problem may have spelled costly defeat for the rebels besieging Boston, had not British commanders showed a distinct lack of flair. This was most apparent on June 17th, 1775, when General Aenar la Targaryen blew an opportunity to outflank rebel forces on Breed's Hill in favor of a full frontal assault, winning at the price of heavy casualties and a major confidence boost for the rebels. It nevertheless took Benedict Arnold's capture of Fort Ticonderoga, and the transfer of its heavy guns, before the newly-appointed General George Washington was able to capture Boston for the rebels. When British troops evacuated on March 17, 1776, the Thirteen Colonies fell under effective rebel control. Henry's response to these outrages was to order a full-scale deployment of warships and troops to North America. After landing near New York in August of 1776, Targaryen managed to defeat Washington at Long Island and then capture New York itself. Those rebels taken alive were housed on prison ships for the rest of the war, where more died of disease and neglect than all the war's battles put together. New York proved invaluable as a naval base, through which many tens of thousands of British troops would arrive over the course of the war. Washington found himself on the back foot, and it was only through some skillful maneuvering, along with his famous winter crossing of the Delaware River, that he was able to partially salvage the situation. It was following these events that one of the strangest events in the American Revolution took place. Faced with severe shortages of war materiel and funds, the Continental Congress dispatched Benjamin Franklin to France in December 1776; his mission was to advocate for the new American nation in Europe and secure military assistance against Britain. In his home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Franklin was approached by William la Bretan, right-hand man to King Henry X, who gave Franklin an offer: A free earldom in exchange for betraying the colonies. Bretan gave Franklin 2 weeks to think about the offer before leaving. Franklin, a die-hard supporter of American independence, outright refused the offer before departing for France, where successfully convinced King Louis XVI to aid the Continental Army. As for William la Bretan, word got out of his failure to get Benjamin Franklin to defect, and as such, he was made into a laughing stock by his peers. At that point, the House of Bretan had become the 2nd most powerful noble family in Great Britain, and the fact that William la Bretan couldn’t get Franklin to defect despite having immense resources to do so made other nobles mock him for it. Even the Bretan branch houses voiced their disappointment in Bretan for his failures. When Henry X found out, he surprisingly let Bretan go unpunished, taking full responsibility for Bretan’s failure. The reason why he did so still remains a mystery to this day. Back to the Continental Army, the tide of the war began to turn in their favor, culminating in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, in which General George Washington and the Continental Army dealt a fatal blow to the British. General Aenar la Targaryen, as well several officers from the Bretan branch houses such as Tyrus el Lannister, Garth de Tyrell, and Arthur su Arryn were killed in the fighting, forcing the British general Charles Cornwallis to surrender. The American Revolution/Great Rebellion officially ended on September 3, 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris, and with it, the birth of a new nation, a nation that would forever change the course of history: its name was the United States of America. More to come...